Painting: What I worked on today

On the left is how the painting was when I began to work on it this morning. I looked at the brick building in the middle and realized there were problems with it, and it basically needed to be completely repainted from the second floor on up. Sounds like a big task, and truthfully I wasn't considering it at first. But, after a few passes of paint, I noticed the shadows were where the highlights belonged! Pretty egregious error.

So, I mixed up enough brick color paint to cover the whole thing, then put the highlights and shadows in the right places. Then, I fixed the stone trim over the windows, and saw that there were many arches making up the facade. Lots of little arches. So I worked on that building for awhile, then needed to let it rest. The cornice on the building to the right of it has been bothering me. I didn't get the number of corbels or the shadows right, so I took another pass at fixing those.

It's really important to get some information down on the canvas that you can respond to. If you do nothing, how do you expect to build on it? And you have a decent shot of either being right, or close, and being able to see this once it's on the canvas. All that's left to do is leave it if it's good, or adjust it if it's not. So I adjusted the shadows and highlights on the cornice, and got the number right: 16. I think it looks better. Not done, but better.